I think there will be rather a lot of us who are quite animated by this issue—one that doesn’t directly affect us—because of our own past experiences. As a gay

I think there will be rather a lot of us who are quite animated by this issue—one that doesn’t directly affect us—because of our own past experiences. As a gay man growing up in the 90s, I very acutely remember some of the public discourse around gay rights while I was a teenager. In the UK, that specifically included a coordinated campaign against mentions of homosexuality in education, with some pretty stark attempts to smear gay men in particular as dangerous predators and paedophiles intent on sneaking their agenda into schools so that they could abuse children. If I’m honest with you, I wouldn’t be particularly animated about trans rights myself (beyond being generally supportive) if it weren’t for the fact that I see exactly the same techniques and accusations levelled against the trans community—specifically trans women—as were used against people like myself 20 years ago. So I’ve personally gone from generally supportive-if-disinterested, to being absolutely fucking furious that this is being allowed to happen again. I’ve observed absolute outright lies about a minority group being repeated by people in positions of influence, and while it might not affect that many people directly I am so absolutely disgusted by it that I fully intend on being extremely vocal about it.